Sunday, November 29, 2015

California, Water, And Golf

California was in the middle of a drought when I arrived in
1975. I stayed in Berkeley for a few
days at the home of friends that had two sons, ages 7 and 9. In the bathroom there was a drawing of a big,
yellow sun that bore the legend, “in this land of drought and sun, we don’t
flush for number one.” For the next few
years it hardly rained at all. It all seemed
normal to me, a newcomer. At that time,
I don’t think the Dodgers had had a rained out home game in all of their time
in L.A.

By the 1980s, the rains had returned with some
strength. There were a few big El Nino
years in a row. In 1982 the storms kept
coming with ruthless regularity until May, so even the Dodgers had to deal with
it. There was water aplenty.

Drought conditions returned in the 1990s. In the mid-1990s the city of Los Angeles, and
maybe the entire county, resorted to water rationing to deal with it. It was announced that starting the following
year, all water users would be limited to a certain percentage of the water
that they had used in the previous year.
There were abuses.

A couple of friends and I were weekend golfers at the
time. We played the municipal courses,
most of which were of the type that we called “goat paths.” Those were courses where the fairways were
straight, flat and uncomplicated. There
might be one hole with a water hazard that was used as a reservoir for the
course, and the grass was pretty beaten down by all of the walkers. There are lots of golfers in Los Angeles. The
best of the municipal courses was Rancho Park, which is really a very nice golf
course, a different story altogether.
Rancho is well forested and very green, with long water holes and many
changes of grade. They even play a
tournament there. Ranco had interesting
ideas about water.

There was a friend of my son’s working in the cart shack at
Rancho at the time. One day we stopped
by after playing to say hello. While we
were having a pleasant natter, I noticed that there were several large diameter
hoses lying around, running full on and draining into a big sewer grate. I asked my young friend about it. “Oh,” he
said, “they’re keeping all of the taps turned on so that next year we don’t
have to worry about water.” They were
artificially raising their baseline for the coming years of water
rationing. Their solution to the drought
problem was to waste vast amounts of potable water, just send it right down the
drain. I’m sure that their explanation
would have been that they were just protecting the integrity of their golf
course, which was a public trust.

Southern California is lousy with golf courses, there must
be hundreds of them. I’m sure that
Rancho wasn’t the only one with this water wasting plan. The many big, beautiful private courses are
capitalist institutions, so the managers there had directors and stockholders
to answer to. It was more important for
them to honor that more limited duty than to consider the public duty to save
water. The number of acre-feet of water
thus wasted must have been staggering.

The current water crisis in California dwarfs anything that
came before during my time in California, maybe anything in history. The state’s reservoirs seem to be mostly
empty. There are a vast number of
man-made lakes in California that are used as reservoirs, and they are
disappearing. The floor of the San
Juaquin Valley is actually sinking, because almost all of the ground water has
been pumped out of the aquafers.
Somehow, though, in aerial photos the golf courses are all strangely
green. Some other blessed locations are
also very green. Lush, in fact. I’m very curious to see how long their luck
can hold out.

Los Angeles is a desert, so maybe it’s time to go to the
style of golf courses that one sees in places like Saudi Arabia. Courses with a small green tee box, nice
green greens, and mostly sand in between.
Or at least links style courses, like the ones found in Scotland. Those are mostly scrub grass that is comfortable
in sandy soil and does not require a lot of watering. Those are “target shooting” courses. “See that little green patch out there? Now lay the ball on it.” (Or else it’s lost.) There’ll be a fuss, but you can get used to
anything it you try a little bit.

Obviously, California is going to have to get used to being
water poor. These days all of the
geniuses in the world are devoting themselves to figuring out ways to make
mischief with fiat money, or avoid paying taxes, or cheat working people out of
benefits. If only a few of the geniuses
would apply their talents to problems of water, or food production, or social
progress, or peaceful coexistence, boy, that would be so fucking great that I
would cry for happiness. I doubt if it
will happen, though. So I guess we’ll
have to settle for the desertification of golf.

No comments:

stat counter

About Me

Mr. C is: a reformed lawyer; a religious atheist; a useful "Handy Man;" an amateur social scientist; a beloved teacher; a well liked husband and father; Ambassador Emeritus from, and to, Planet X; a freelance professor; taxi driver to the stars (Joe DiMaggio and Ronald McDonald, both out of uniform); an excellent fire fighter; an enthusiastic but untalented musician; an experienced counselor; a top-notch disk jockey; an all around get-along-guy; a cunning linguist; a would-be lifestyle victim; a Masonic wannabe; a frequent reader; Professor Irwin Corey's Ph.D. adviser; an accomplished driver and motorcyclist; a famous rockologist; a reliable but indifferent bullshit detective; a poor speller; a proud United States Navy veteran (honorably discharged, barely); the Ayatollah of Ass-o-Hola; a drug legend; a Returned Peace Corps volunteer (Thailand); a generally charming man; nationally and internationally known from coast to coast; a legend in his own mind; a cultural-anthropological critic-at-large; an avenging angel who coolly bides his time; Soul Brother number 37; and a friend to the poor.